Determining the direction to a sound source in air using vector sound-intensity probes

Abstract

This paper is concerned with probes for measuring vector sound intensity in air using the minimum number of sound-pressure sensors. The probes consist of an arrangement of four small microphones at the vertices of a regular tetrahedron. They are connected to a digital signal processor, which determines the sound-intensity vector, using the cross-spectral formulation based on finite-difference approximations. Determining the direction of a sound source is an obvious application. To do this accurately the probes should be omnidirectional. This implies that the microphones in the probe have to be omnidirectional and to have the same response. Results in the paper show that the direction of a sound source can be determined with an accuracy of a few degrees. Two types of probes are described. One measures the sound-intensity vector in three-dimensional space. The other measures the vector in a half space such as would occur above the ground or in front of a wall.